Students with low vision, including those with multiple disabilities, are entitled to a comprehensive educational program that includes services from professionals in the field of visual impairment. This program should encompass a range of specialists and services that enable the students to complete current and future tasks in school, at home, in the workplace, and in the community. In particular, students with low vision require appropriate assessment, instruction, and adaptations to facilitate visual efficiency. Although students with low vision represent the largest subgroup of students with visual impairments (Kirchner & Diamant, 1999), their intensive instructional needs have not been clearly understood. As a consequence, comprehensive instructional strategies that are geared toward this specific population are only now emerging (Corn, DePriest, & Erin, 2000; Corn & Koenig, 1996; D'Andrea & Farrenkopf, 2000; Lueck, 2004). Knowing and applying best practices for teaching students with low vision is crucial, particularly in light of research that found that the reading rates of these students are slower than are those of their classmates who read regular print (Gompel, van Bon, & Schreuder, 2004; Lueck et al., 2003). For instance, some studies have suggested that providing students with low vision with magnification devices may be a better alternative than providing them with large-print materials (Corn et al., 2003; Efron & Lackey, 1974). Educational programs throughout the United States constantly make efforts to improve the education of students with low vision. Many of these efforts involve modifications of learning materials, such as the provision of large-print textbooks. In South Carolina, Efron and Lackey (1974) conducted a study to compare the use of large-print textbooks to the use of small stand magnifiers by students with low vision. They found that the Visolette magnifier was as good as large-print materials for reading and math, but since the level of magnification was not determined for each participant individually, some students did better with large-print materials. One of their recommendations was that teachers of students with visual impairments should receive additional training in magnification devices to help their students learn to use magnifiers better. The results of Efron and Lackey's (1974) study in South Carolina and those of Project PAVE--Providing Access to the Visual Environment (Corn et al., 2003)--in Tennessee led us to believe that students with low vision who use magnification devices for reading will perform as well as or better than students with low vision who use large-print reading materials. Therefore, we designed a project to test this assumption. This report explains how we designed the project. COST ASSOCIATED WITH LARGE PRINT As we mentioned, students with low vision are frequently provided with large-print books to read. Although large print gives many students the opportunity to access information in textbooks, there are several limitations to this strategy. First, the students have access only to the print that has been enlarged for them, and these children may struggle to read nonlarge print items they may encounter such as menus or telephone books or beakers needed to measure chemicals in science laboratory experiments, for example. Second, the difficulties and costs of enlarging colored pictures, graphs, and charts result in second-rate productions of graphics, thereby hindering children's comprehension of critical information. Furthermore, the cost of producing large-print books is significant. According to Jill Ischinger, the director of the South Carolina Instructional Resource Center (personal communication, November 21, 2005), the annual cost of providing a set of large print books to a student is approximately $2,737. Also, students who choose to further their education beyond high school have severely limited reading options. …